


Ball

by RapidashPatronus



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Sharing a Bed, Sleepy Cuddles, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-27
Updated: 2017-06-27
Packaged: 2018-11-19 21:06:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11321745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RapidashPatronus/pseuds/RapidashPatronus
Summary: Cassian is much too tired to walk anywhere at all.





	Ball

**Author's Note:**

  * For [anothersadsong](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anothersadsong/gifts).



> A special present for anothersadsong - good and happy things for these two, with sleepy cuddles as requested. <3

It’s more a stumble than a walk, out into the hangar, and as he swings forward and topples from foot, to foot, to foot, to foot, Cassian is reminded somehow through his haze that walking is only ever, really, just a steady way of falling.

And that feeling of falling with every step is like a lead ball rolling down a stairway, but instead of forward, he’s pulled to the side, and through a narrow, lash-fringed slice of vision he sees that Jyn has appeared, and she has pushed herself under his arm, bearing him up. He remembers the time once before that she did this, and her strength had not surprised him then, either…

“You’re concussed,” she’s saying with an echo, but no, that’s long gone, he just doesn’t sleep well on ships – any more – and he’s tired, dog-tired – it must be three days they’ve been on the lanes and so much running that came before… he tries to explain but he’s not sure whether he’s not speaking well or not hearing himself well, or both, but it sounds wrong.

There are people floating around him everywhere, huge distorted faces that stretch and snap back like elastic pennants on a slow wind, and every pillow-deep voice is saying things like _are you alright_ and _is he ok_ and _can I help_ but Jyn just hitches him up with a grunt and keeps him moving forward.

He’s just tired. But he knows she’ll keep him going from foot, to foot, to foot, until they reach – but there’s no sand in his room so – no, that’s right, that’s normal, that’s good.

But he must have forgotten, because this isn’t the way – but yes, don’t they change the layout on Primedays, something to do with keeping the Drabatans happy, that would explain why he feels like he’s wading through water, they must be pumping from somewhere, and he tries to ask the woman who’s kneeling beside him on the floor, but maybe she can’t hear him underwater because she closes her eyes and he can’t see any more.

 

\--

 

Cassian feels the mattress soft beneath him and the blanket heavy over him when he wakes up. He keeps his eyes closed for a moment and tries to work out where he is.

The sheets don’t crunch like the medbay beds, but it’s not quite as firm as his own bed, and there’s the sound of someone breathing slowly somewhere nearby. He isn’t quite ready to open his eyes, but curiosity has been his guide for too long to keep them closed now.

It’s a room much like his, but like his if someone took everything out of it. He’s rather too warm and comfortable to worry about why anyone would do that. He turns onto his side, his cheek pressing into the pillow, and he sees Jyn.

She’s asleep in a chair next to the bed, her chin on her chest in a way that is really going to hurt her neck soon. But the sound of him turning brings her to; she pulls her head up in a sideways half-moon and blinks at him with slow heaviness.

“You’re awake,” she says pointlessly.

He nods, hearing his face scrub against the pillow, his eyes already trying to close themselves again. “Your room?” he manages.

“Closer than yours,” she answers with a yawn. “You’re surprisingly heavy, Cassian.”

He thinks back, tries to track how he got here. He draws a blank, and frowns at her.

“So, are we done tripping the light fantastic?” Jyn asks him, rolling her neck cautiously and grimacing at the crunching sound it produces.

Cassian swallows and hunts around in his memory for something to hang her words on. He admits defeat with a faint honk and closes his eyes.

“Do you remember anything at all?” comes her voice from nearby, and he’s dragged back.

“Nope,” he mumbles, and prises his eyes open again. She looks almost as wiped out as he is.

“Whatever food supplies you found on that ship must have been there for aeons.” Her laugh, drowsy and hiccupping, sounds to him like a song of some kind. “The _look_ of it, ugh. Didn’t you see it?”

He tugs at the blanket. “I don’t remember.”

“You were _flying_.” She’s delighted. She goes on, her chin starting to drop once more. “Some kind of spores or something and – Force, Cassian, you – you were _away_.” And that low, sleepy laugh again, and then she pulls her head up, shifts around in the chair. “You said you were a _ball_.”

He opens his mouth to respond, but he’s got nothing. There’s a void somewhere between getting on the shuttle and here, and he doesn’t remember ever having thought he was a ball in his life. He blinks again – or means to blink, but his eyes don’t open again and he starts to sink back into the warmth.

A thought strikes him and pulls him back. “You don’t look comfortable.”

“I’m fine.”

“Mm-mm.” He shakes his head and shuffles back against the wall, lifting the blanket. There’s no sound of movement and he can feel cooler air snaking in where he’s lifted it, and it occurs to him that maybe she, too, has her eyes shut, and hasn’t seen the invitation. He opens his.

She’s staring.

“Come on,” he mumbles. “There’s room. I’m in your _bed_.” And he what he means is that he feels bad, but it comes out wrong and he doesn't know how to save it.

He flaps the blanket at her insistently, and he regrets the whoosh of air it sucks over him but it seems to work, because Jyn heaves herself out of the chair and does a sort of half-turn, half-collapse to sit on the bed, facing away from him. She toes off her boots, swings her legs up and grabs the proffered half of the blanket, flapping it over her with something approaching defiance. It rushes one more gust of cool air over him again; it settles somewhere in the space between his chest and her back, and as stillness returns, it begins to warm.

“Cassian?”

She sounds asleep already.

“Mm?”

“I’m glad you’re ok.”

“Mm.”

“It’s funny now.”

“Mm.”

“A _ball_ …”

She shakes the bed a little, and her snuffling laugh is like a lullaby.

 

\--

 

At some point she turns over in her sleep. It wakes him up. The side of her face is crumpled and lined from the pillow, and her hair sticks in strands across her half-open mouth. Like her strength, her beauty doesn’t surprise him.

Cassian is still too much asleep to be hesitant as he reaches an arm over her and pulls her in. She nudges her head underneath his rough chin and puts her hand to the back of his shoulder, and with an unruly wisp of Jyn’s hair fluttering against his lips as he breathes, he drifts away.

 

\--

 

Cassian opens his eyes, and it’s light. He takes a moment to contemplate the feeling of his arm around Jyn’s body, and spreads his fingers over her shirt, against her back. He feels her mouth spread into a smile against his collarbone.

“Morning, Ball,” she mumbles.

“Morning,” he answers, and slides his hand up, finds the knot of hair fraying at the top of her neck. He loosens it with care, a soft brown helix on the pillow, and he combs his fingers through it gently. She gives a quiet hum and nuzzles in a little closer. Soon, her ribs beneath his arm move slowly again, and he keeps combing her hair across the pillow, wondering if she still feels his body against her while she dreams, like he did.

And this, too, Cassian realises, is just a steady way of falling.


End file.
